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June 30, 2004
Are you there God? It's me, Wesley Snipes.
We dare you to think of a better band name. Seriously. And not only that, but these five guys learned 80+ songs in like two weeks in order to be the backbone of Reverend Pete's live band karaoke last night. Pete is moving to New York in August, and has clearly decided to raise as much rock 'n' roll hooplah as humanly possible before his departure.
There's much that can be said about this event, but we are too goddam tuckered to do it justice. So, in customary lazy-ass list form, some highlights:
- Dear buddy Phil's band Butterknife opened with their special brand of pop-rock flava.
- Phil looked hot. You did, Phil.
- Butterknife followed by bafflingly tight and rocking punk-ska outfit Stray Bullets. So many tattoos.
- Are you there God? It's me, Wesley Snipes cleaned house, beginning with "Suffragette City" and ending with "Killing in the Name of", even while being forced to back dozens of different frontmen/women with wide variation in talent.
- Such as Girl-E, who couldn't have gotten a transition right if it were her goddam job.
- Bass player was that one guy who once gave Girl-E a bass lesson.
- Drunk girl mistook Girl-E for someone she is not. Drunk girl embarrassed herself.
- One of the drag kings sang "Hey Ya".
- Unwittingly found selves listening to "Barbie Girl" on car ride home.
Maybe when Pete moves Girl-E will remember she is not 19 and should get to damn bed sometimes.
Posted by The Twins at 10:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 29, 2004
Twenty Questions
1) Is that really the date?
2) Who wants to go see the trifecta of Kenny Loggins, Bryan Adams, and Bruce Hornsby, who are playing back-to-back nights at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom?
3) How about Hanson the week before?
4) Why does humidity have to take a crisp 62 degree day and make it grosser than gross?
5) What is that?
6) Why was the dental hygenist this morning so twitchy?
7) Who do you have to sleep with to find a decent chow fun noodle in this town?
8) Does that itch?
9) Are you gonna eat that?
10) Funny or not funny flying: Jenna Bush?
11) Is it possible for pants to shrink a size on their own?
12) Will Mary-Kate Olsen make it through her ordeal?
13) Just how unconcerned is it acceptable to be about a billionaire teenager with an eating disorder?
14) How vigilant are we expected to be this holiday weekend?
15) Can we get a what-what?
16) Is that a mag light in your pocket?
17) How many times do we have to tell you?
18) What do you think Paul Bremer likes on his pizza?
19) Did someone say pizza?
20) Do you know any place we can see Farenheit 9/11 on Imax?
Posted by The Twins at 11:25 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
June 27, 2004
This is one of those
"sorry we've been awol, we were out of town at a wedding but will write something fascinating shortly" posts. We are a few credits short of a degree in this. Come back tonight or tomorrow.
Posted by The Twins at 03:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 24, 2004
That thong-th-thong-thong-thong
Evidently, everyone's just thrown in the towel. Everywhere you go in Boston, and probably anywhere, there is clear and present evidence of a collective "fuck it". War, bombs, the closure of the Green Line subway between North Station and Lechmere, George W. Bush, carbs, extreme makeovers, Disney, the Church, Jessica Simpson, the DH rule-- it all blows, so why even bother. With shoes that is. This is apparently the attitude of pretty much everyone, because pretty much everyone is wearing flip-flops, all the time.
Seriously, it's staggering. Forget the usual suspects of teenagers and weekend shoppers. We've seen babies in flip-flops. Nuns in flip-flops. Women wearing tailored Tahari suits in flip-flops. Ok, maybe not nuns-- but that's only because we haven't seen any nuns lately, not because they're not wearing flip-flops. Because they must be. On Girl-E's morning subway commute, there is not a single young professional not wearing Reefs with their Dockers or Micro-sheen Ann Taylor pants.
Girl-E herself could not be more thrilled. She is a total wuss when it comes to shoes-- she can barely tolerate slightly elevated loafers, let alone Manolos. So the idea that it is perfectly acceptable to wear rubber flip-flops with a button-down and knee-length skirt totally rules. She's got the Old Navy $3.50 variety, and barely thinks about that cat teeth holes in the sole. For important meetings or fancy-dress occasions, she'll sport the black J. Crews with the subtly inclined wedge sole. She does need a new pair of Reefs, though, because last year's are all stretched out and she's got a number of outfits for which light blue and teal would be more than appropriate. She'll be in New Jersey at a(nother freakin') wedding this weekend, and she's thinking of clear plastic flip-flops to go with her burgundy crochet-overlay strapless.
Of course, if flip-flops are the new Nine West, that does pose a dilemma about what one should wear to the beach. For all we know, it'll be knee-high boots this year. Perfect with the boy-short bikinis. Yeah. But really, who cares. Fuck it.
Posted by The Twins at 11:18 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
June 23, 2004
The only animal with four knees
Trivial Pursuit Question of the Week
Category: Sports and Leisure
How many times must a player change mounts in elephant polo, according to the World Elephant Polo Association Handbook?
Posted by The Twins at 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 22, 2004
Follow-up
After yesterday's Super Quiz, we have decided conclusively to host a Shabba-Doo (aka Adolfo Quinones) Film Festival. Line-up will include Lambada, Tango & Cash, Breakin', Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, and Xanadu (Xanadu!).
Let us know if you'd like to be included on the Evite.
Posted by The Twins at 12:36 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
June 21, 2004
Stonewood, Stonewood, Stonewood, Stonewood.... Rocks!
We must apologize for the dirth of posting over the past few days. We have been in the ICU with Girl-E, recovering from a frightening and traumatic experience that we can hardly believe we survived. She's normally pretty street-smart, and as vigilant as would ever be expected by the Department of Homeland Security, but everyone gets complaicent every once in a while. So it was during one of these lapses in alertness that she found herself facing a screen playing the 1990 cultural atrocity, Lambada.
If you have not seen this "film", cherish those 104 minutes of your life and never let go. There are good movies. There are bad movies that are watchable in the right context. There are bad movies so bad that they are good. And then there are bad movies that are so bad, they move beyond being so bad they're good, to an entirely shocking realm of suckage. In that last category resides Lambada.
In the spirit of the final climactic scene of the movie, we will challenge you to a friendly Super Quiz. Which of the following statements are true about Lambada, and which are we totally making up because no filmmaker could possibly consider them worthy of public consumption:
a) Hot but "dorky" Beverly Hills math teacher by day, black leather and knife-shaped earring-clad motorcycle-riding Lambada king known as "Blade" by night at tough and unforgiving night club in East L.A.
b) Patrons of club are all recalcitrant Black and Latino teenagers who dress in florescent clubwear and do the Lambada all night long.
c) In addition to being the best dancer at the club, Blade is actually there to run "Galaxy High," where he prepares said hopeless minority teenagers for the GED in the club's pool room.
d) Wayward teenagers are completely engaged in each and every lesson.
e) Except for Ramone (spelled like that), the intense gangbanger in gold lame jacket played by choreographer Shabba-Doo, who is threatened by Blade and his attempts to be the Great White Hope of the barrio.
f) Until Ramone learns that Blade is, in fact, a "homey," because he was raised in East L.A. by Mexican parents who gave him up for adoption to a nice white family when he was 14, an event which apparently transformed his appearence to something that could not be less Mexican.
g) Blade teaches Ramone the "rectangular coordinate system" and how it can help one make a difficult shot in 8-ball.
h) Blade actually uses a protractor on the pool table which he whips out of his leather jacket.
i) Ramone is later seen hiding in a corner of the club with a book. And a protractor.
j) Spoiled and popular Beverly Hills student Sandy somehow ends up at East L.A. club, sees math teacher all radded out, and fantasizes about doing the Lambada with him on a motorcycle.
k) Sandy can, in fact, believe that the Lambada was outlawed in Brazil.
l) Blade is disgusted, and yet oddly aroused, by Sandy's subsequent advances.
m) Fat white biker-with-a-heart-of-gold owner of night club procures a bus for Galaxy High, spraypainted especially for them by East L.A.'s finest tag writers, so that they can go across town and break into Stonewood High in Beverly Hills and learn computers.
n) Upon learning of Blade's antics, cranky evil Stonewood Principal fires him.
o) Until slightly less-cranky Beverly Hills Superintendent proposes a competition between Stonewood and Galaxy students to determine Blade's fate, to be known as the Super Quiz.
p) Galaxy students pull algebraic equations and trigonometric identities out of their ass.
q) At the final quiz-winning point, Ramone is up against Sandy's asshole Don Johnson wannabe boyfriend.
r) The question is to explain the "rectangular coordinate system".
s) Ramone freezes up until Blade pulls an 8-ball out of his briefcase, and proceeds to give a nonsensical answer which the Superintendent decides is correct.
t) Blade gets on stage and makes a speech about how we all have more in common than we think, no matter what color our skin or zip code we live in.
u) Galaxy and Stonewood students spontaneously begin to rapturously embrace.
v) During which time some of the Galaxy teenagers set up a massive sound system in the parking lot.
w) To which all teenagers run in extreme joy.
x) And begin to Lambada in mixed-race couples.
y) Except for Blade and his wife, who suddenly accepts Blade's strange activities and gets down and dirty.
z) It starts to rain hard, which makes everyone extremely sexy, and apparently has no detrimental effect on the massive sound system because the ass-o-rific Lambada theme song is playing loud as ever.
Please place your answers in the comments box. And think carefully, this is for world peace y'all.
Posted by The Twins at 11:28 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
June 18, 2004
Quit yer bitchin'
Ok, we will. Thanks to a kind soul (who doesn't even read the blog), you can now write to us here. But we wouldn't necessarily recommend it, since we have 6 other email addresses. But if Girl-E could have seven Cabbage Patch Kids, then we don't see what the big deal is.
Posted by The Twins at 09:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 17, 2004
Cool kids, schmool kids
Remember what we said yesterday about being in with the cool kids? Well, along that train of thought, what died and left this gmail thing in control of the e-social universe? It seems that everyone we know is flashing their bright shiny invitations to the world's most elite secret society-slash-webmail client. Those Google folks are genius, no doubt about it. "I've got it!" says Mr. Google, "we'll make it 'not widely available' while we 'test' it, and by 'not widely available' we mean 'widely available by invitation to a pyramid scheme.' This thing will be so popular, it will be like the Google of webmail!"
Not that we don't want an invite.
Posted by The Twins at 11:37 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
June 16, 2004
Are you worthy?
The ballots are in, the gauntlet is down. We don't know what kind of extortion or begging was involved, but it is now absolutely conclusive that Girl-E has gotten in with the cool kids. And when we say the cool kids, we mean not the kids who were necessarily cool in high school, but the kids who, ten years later, know from fucking exceptional.
Case in point:
Reverend Pete opens last night's Rock Star Karaoke with Avril Levigne's "Complicated," but sings it as only Stephen Tyler would. When he's finished, the first performer on the docket is Girl-E's most excellent buddy Dr. Claw. Dr. Claw makes her way to the stage, and we hear the opening measures to Duran Duran's "Rio". Oh cool, we think, we haven't heard this in a while.
Only Claw doesn't sing "Rio". She sings "Rio" IN FRENCH. The whole goddam song, IN FRENCH. Now, the lyrics on the screen were not in French. They were in English, as they always are. But she real-time translated like she was the fucking U.N. This morning, Girl-E got an email from Dr. Claw's boyfriend of about three weeks, saying he almost proposed to her on the spot. And really, it would not have been all so outlandish if he had.
Case #2:
Reverend Pete interrupts the normal flow of things to announce there will be a rap competition, the winner receiving a pack of Doublemint. Being the dope MC and gum-lover that she is, Girl-C naturally volunteers. After three contestants aptly perform "Gin and Juice," "Parents Just Don't Understand," and "Baby Got Back," Girl-C steps demurely to the mic for Princess Superstar's "Bad Babysitter" (but not until after Girl-E grabs a broom from the wait station and sweeps the stage in front of the mic, as do Princess Superstar's actual handlers). Being a serious student of the art of rhymes, particularly those of blonde Jewish females such as P.S., Girl-C simply fucking owns it. And who do you think won that gum with overwhelming audience agreement? No really, who?
Anyway, everyone's got their own idea of cool. And perhaps this is not yours. But did we mention the FRENCH?
Posted by The Twins at 01:42 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
June 15, 2004
I've found my special purpose!
You know how Slurpees are all great at first, and then about halfway through after you've drunk most of the liquid they're all hard and icy? Well we just had the best idea! If it's a Diet Pepsi or otherwise cola-flavored Slurpee, just grab a can out of the work fridge and pour it over the flavorless ice! And if it's cherry-flavored, all the better!!
Jesus christ this is a fucking useless day.
Posted by The Twins at 03:11 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 14, 2004
A Guide for Those Having a Shitty Day, from Someone Having a Shitty Day
Affliction: Fatigue
Treatment: Plain yogurt mixed with maple pecan granola, iced coffee
Affliction: Lack of motivation
Treatment: Walk up and down Massachusetts Avenue at lunch time and make eye contact with every homeless person you pass
Affliction: Panic
Treatment: Call Mom
Affliction: Twitchy malaise induced by eating more grilled meat yesterday than any decent human should eat
Treatment: Veggie wrap on whole wheat tortilla. Apricots. Five of them.
Affliction: Self-doubt
Treatment: Make concrete plans for rest of day which include physical activity and resist nap-related derailment. DO NOT NAP!!
Affliction: Sorrow/Ennui
Treatment: Brainstorm songs for tomorrow's karaoke show and download from iTunes if not already in collection. Tell anyone who thinks this is sad to go to hell.
Affliction: Fatigue (3pm variety)
Treatment: Deal. 3pm fatigue is not treatable.
Affliction: Impatience
Treatment: Start blogging. Next you look it will be 40 minutes closer to the end of the day.
Posted by The Twins at 02:42 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
June 13, 2004
Don't spaz
Reasons to seek relief as soon as you feel the onset of stress:
1) Your beach picnic/fancy dinner/sleepover bachelorette party could instead become 14 hours sitting still on your couch with stress-related back spasms while your party-clad friends take turns making runs for take out and Percoset.
2) Your wedding is in two weeks and the stress ain't gonna get better.
K, we pray to the gods of zen peace for you.
Posted by The Twins at 09:21 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 11, 2004
Fryday
Just a little note to say yaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.
Posted by The Twins at 04:58 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 10, 2004
Regaling
Why the implications of today did not occur to us or Girl-E, we have no idea. For the past few days, she's watched them set up the graduation tent right outside her rather large first floor office window, enjoying the sort of pleasantly novel transformation of a university as it prepares for Commencement. But that tent out there, well it seems it was to be filled with hundreds of loud people today. Oh, and an endless (*endless*) recorded loop of Pomp and Circumstance. At the blink of an eye she could throw up her window and give an impromptu address to the crowd, seeing as her office is smack behind and just to the left of the platform, at exactly the same level. She could also start launching bottles of Poland Spring, or shoot a water gun directly at the graduating doctoral cohort. Their "crimson" (which is actually a blinding fuschia) robes make easy targets. She does have a rubber squirty fish in her purse, but that doesn't hold enough water.
Oh crap, they're starting. How goddam distracting. Oh, and congratulations and stuff.
p.s. Talk about the pot calling the kettle blinding fuschia. Jeez.
Posted by The Twins at 12:41 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
June 09, 2004
This was accidentally posted without a title so we went back and added this one
Seeing as there is that international and national strife we were alluding to yesterday, not to mention some of the personal and physical kind (Girl-E currently has the knees and the respiratory system of a 78-year-old), we thought we would take a moment to mention some things that do not suck. Yes, this is the kind of cop out thing that people write when they can't think of anything else, but that doesn't make lists of things that don't suck any less necessary to our world and the folks who inhabit it. So anyway:
The sun
Egg & cheese sandwiches on english muffins
Friends with whom every conversation lasts two hours but feels like five minutes
Purple rubber water toys
Driving through town with the windows rolled down blasting Foreigner
Friends who don't criticize or roll their eyes or comment snarkily about people who would drive through town with the windows rolled down blasting Foreigner (this is a preemptive maneuver)
Foods that begin with S and are high in nutrients
Interleague play (i.e. that which enables this week's matchup between Girl-E's childhood and current baseball teams)
Master Shake
We take that back, he kinda sucks a little. We meant Frylock.
"Say It Ain't So" by Weezer
You. And you, and you too.
Posted by The Twins at 11:05 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
June 08, 2004
Commence with the commencing
Thursday is Commencement at the institution where Girl-E works, and tents are being pitched all around. So to speak. The campus is overflowing with flip flops and academic regalia, usually both at the same time. After Thursday, it will be officially summer, which means that Girl-E can spend a little less time working and more time visiting with all of you.*
Being the speechwriter for her particular muckity-muck, Girl-E is obviously somewhat occupied during this time of the year. She is charged with taking her boss's stream of consciousness thoughts about the meaning of life and turning them into a coherent address. Problem is, Girl-E herself has been operating solely on stream of consciousness lately, so this is a special challenge. As a result, her first draft looked a little something like this:
"Good afternoon, I am delighted to celebrate this day with graduates, families, and friends. You should be very proud of what you've accomplished this year, because there have been many challenges and damn I'm hungry. You are leaving here during a time of national, international, magical, mythical, fantastical, local yokle oklie-doklie strife and damn if I know what to do about it, shit. All of us up here on this stage which is like totally about to collapse under the weight of the faculty if you know what I'm saying know you will be moving on up, to the East Side, to a deluxe apartment in the sky. And remember, when you're there, beans don't burn in the kitchen. The field to which you have dedicated your life is noble, and honestly really fucking frustrating what the hell is that noise? I am so full of pride for you, not to mention bloated, jesus. I look forward to seeing the amazing things you will do, and also the new Harry Potter movie which I hear is better than the first two, and isn't Emma Thompson awesome? Congratulations, may the force be with you, and also with you, and fuck I am really hungry."
Etc.
*We jest, of course. She could not possibly spend more time visiting all of you, unless she had that time-twisting thing that Hermione has.
Posted by The Twins at 01:16 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
June 05, 2004
What the....? Revisted
Clearly, someone has written us into some cracked up version of a Shirley Jackson story. There is no way that we are not paying for this. First Girl-E gets a totally unexpected and really seriously undeserved raise. Now, it has just come to our attention that our schizophrenic account of the gay marriage debate at My Big Fat Constitutional Convention has been nominated and selected as a finalist for a Diarist Award for Best Account of a Public or News Event. Thanks like crazy to whoever nominated us, and we know you'll be cashing in that chit any day now. Seriously, only people like Julia and Dooce get those things, people, like, read their sites, and for a reason.
Anyway, here is where we're supposed to go bananas with the self-deprication, but that can be tiresome, so instead we'll just say thank you again to the secret sneaky bastard, and we'd be lying if we said we didn't think you're fucking awesome. You can go here to see the finalists in all categories and find some great new sites. Like you need more on your blogroll, floozies.
p.s. oh, and uh, right. RIP Ronald Reagan. Sorry.
Posted by The Twins at 06:02 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
June 04, 2004
How many Ivy League professors does it take to twist pop culture into something stupendously nerdy?*
Yesterday, at an event honoring one of Girl-E's colleagues (a statistician), another professor (a curricular scholar) praised the honoree for helping him over the years with her perspective, saying she lended a "Quant Eye for the Qual Guy". The room errupted in laughter. This is the kind of joke you don't want the general public to know you get.
*If Bryan can write an entire post comparing trigonometric identities with sitcom characters, we can do this.
Posted by The Twins at 10:17 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
June 03, 2004
What the...?
While sitting at her desk reading blogs for the past who the hell knows how long, Girl-E was just rudely interrupted by her boss... who came to tell her that they're giving her a $2,000 raise and $1,000 bonus. Excuse us while we look for the hidden camera and wacky television personality. This world is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a low-carb tortilla.
Posted by The Twins at 03:26 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Screwing The World's Children: Two Vignettes
*Live on Pay-Per-View, Rumsfeld the Rumbler vs. The Innocent, Neglected, Struggling and Underprepared Children of the United States*
See the mighty unbridled power of $216 billion in war appropriations knock out core education funding! Its strength will astonish you! Imagine a rock solid warrior who is:
*Nearly four times the budget of the Department of Education!
*Nearly double what the GAO said in the mid-1990s was needed to repair the nation's schools!
*24 times what it would cost to fully fund No Child Left Behind!
*43 times what it would cost to enroll the remaining 40 percent of eligible preschoolers still not in Head Start!
*848 times the cost of the Even Start family literacy program!
*1,800 times the appropriation for the (soon to be cut) national math-science partnership between high schools and universities!
*6,352 times the cost of a (likely to be cut) program to to help pay secondary school counselors!
*12,000 times the cost of a (in danger of being cut) national writing project!
Order now!!
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You know what's awesome? When a group of about 8 muckity-mucks has a lunch meeting and has it fully catered with selections of salmon, chicken, rice, black bean salad, rustic bread, and two kinds of brownies, and then eat like 1/25th of it, and leave piles of uneaten food plus their dirty trash in the conference room. We are outraged for the starving Chinese kids*.
*except that there are piles of really good uneaten food.
Posted by The Twins at 02:38 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 02, 2004
Learning new things every day
Did you know that the only mosque in the United States of America is located on the Embassy Row section of Masschusetts Avenue in Washington, DC? It's true. At least, according to the guide of our wedding-guest-DC tour on Friday night. By the way, if you don't know what a mosque is, it's a place of worship for the Moslems. Be sure to pronounce it like that. They used to let people in there to look around, but they probably no longer let anyone in for security reasons. She thinks. Regardless of the wide open gate and two people sitting on the front steps chatting. They should be careful. Also, despite popular belief, the name of the 16th U.S. president is pronounced Lin-KOLLN. Which we guess it would be. If you've only seen it in print. The statue in the Lin-KOLLN Memorial is 16 feet tall, seated. He would be 27 feet tall standing, but he won't stand, so she emphasized that this really doesn't matter of course.
Another very interesting thing about DC is that it is a place with a lot of international people. They come for meetings at the International Monetary Bank. And it's really neat to see a lot of people like that on the streets. But there are many protests. Those people should also be careful. The Kennedy Center was a wonderful addition to DC. It brought lots of operas, and concerts, and events, and operas.
So anyway, all we can say is, thank god for Rabbi Shnayer and his guitar. No offense to Girl-E's many loved ones who have married over the past several months, but we really were desperate for a Jewish wedding to break up the recent endless stream of Protestant nuptial liturgy. It was also evident that the groom, a gentile himself, was totally stoked about the raised chair dance. And the fact that you get to drink and break things during the ceremony. Mazeltov, man, mazeltov.
One more thing: the cicadas, they're gross. GROSS.
Posted by The Twins at 10:46 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
June 01, 2004
abadee abaddee again
...uh... yeah... sorry... had another out of town wedding this weekend... but you probably guessed that since we can't remember the last time we spent a weekend any other way. Anyway, we'll write something real soon, er at least by tomorrowish.
Posted by The Twins at 09:34 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack